Down for a good mystery collection of short stories? Havana Noir does not leave you wanting. More cops, more robbers, more mobsters, more death, more struggle. More smugness, more drinking, more pizza, and more pain. Guess what? The guilty always get caught but damn if the guilty do not make it difficult for the good guys to catch them. If they made it easy, it would not be good.

The image of two black Americans raising their fists at the 1968 Olympics has been duplicated the world over but many do not know the story behind it or gold medal winner Tommie Smith. No one knows he is also the only man to hold eleven world records in track and field simultaneously. Here Smith dispels rumors. First rumor, he never was stripped of his gold medal. Second rumor, he raised his fist to signify the black power movement. He did not. He had another reason and you should know it.

A posthumous publication written by Haitian Scholar and poet Rene Philoctete, Massacre River is the tale of a town on the Haitian-Dominican Republic border and the massacre that occurred there. To put it short, well told historical fiction.

At a time when China, India, Brazil and Russia are reshaping the international hierarchy, Fareed Zakaria provides an informative look at a world "in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate global politics, or overwhelm cultures." Call it a preview of the 21st century, or, as Ornette would say, the shape of things to come.

Ten years after the murder of her mother, somebody was slaying the whores of Sector 7, and twenty-year-old Sage Steele was determined to find the killer. Her heart bled for the Onyx City hookers, and if nobody was going to protect them from the horrors of the city, then it was her duty to be the avenging angel of Algren Avenue.

Reading about the murders in the Onyx Observer, whose ace crime reporters detailed the poisoned mind of the hooker killer the press had dubbed “the Valentine Killer,” because of the large hearts he carved into each victim’s cleavage, made Sage disgusted. Never forgetting where she came from, she reasoned, “No matter what, those women are my sisters. We share the same tainted blood. I’m going to find this bastard.” continue